


Undefined

by ZedElla (Leviarty)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Autism Spectrum, Implied Sam Wilson/Riley - Freeform, M/M, Non-Chronological, Non-Linear Narrative, Pre-Series, Season/Series 01, Sheppard is secretly a mathlete
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 17:10:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6160645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leviarty/pseuds/ZedElla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Flying, it turned out, was the only thing that made more sense to him than math.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Undefined

Major John Sheppard knew he fucked up – in the eyes of the government that is. Afghanistan was a mess from start to finish, but he didn’t actually regret his actions. He’d do it all again, if a similarly shitty situation presented itself.

Still, he knew he fucked up, and that particular shitstorm haunted him every day. Trying to save the lives of his three buddies – one of whom he’d been somewhat romantically involved with – had cost the life of one of the pararescue, and Holland hadn’t even made it out alive. He couldn’t close his eyes without seeing it happen all over again.

Holland’s funeral sucked, and John couldn’t look his family in the eye, couldn’t look anyone in the eye. He didn’t think there was anything in the world that could possibly have been worse than this.

Until Sgt. Riley’s funeral the next day. He hadn’t known the guy, but he had felt obligated – he’d died as a direct result of Sheppard’s actions, he deserved… something. He’d looked into Riley; he had a good record, saved a lot of people. He deserved a hell of a lot better than he got.

It was hard, looking at the smiling photo of Riley over the closed casket, listening to friends and family speak praises, watching his mother openly weep, and his wingman Wilson trying to find the appropriate balance between grieving and stoic.

But the worst part, the absolute worst thing was when Wilson approached him and said “It’s good you came,” followed by “don’t beat yourself up so hard.” And Sheppard just doesn’t fucking understand, how this man, clearly upset and grieving the loss of someone he loved, can say such a thing, like all was forgiven, like John hadn’t killed a man.

“I’d’ve done the same thing,” Wilson said. “And I know Riley would have too. Orders be damned, we don’t leave people behind.”

John didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything at all.

 

 

He never really was very good with people. He’d been on the lacrosse team in high school, but never did more than warm the bench and carry gear for the ‘real’ team. He hadn’t been cool enough, or strong enough; he knew the others had poked fun at his scrawny figure, both behind his back, and to his face. He hadn’t made friends in the chess club either, where he found that people were not so intelligent as they pretended to be. He hadn’t really fit in anywhere, which was mostly okay, because math was easier to understand than people anyway.

 

His mom had died when he was young, and his dad never quite got him the way she had. The older he grew, the more their personalities clashed. By the time he reached fourteen, his father had his life all mapped out, from college, to grad school, to career. John wouldn’t have been surprised if his gravesite had already been plotted. But John? He wanted none of it. Eighteen couldn’t come fast enough, and when it finally did, he was out the door, on his way to Stanford, in defiance of The Plan.

 

Stanford, like his high school advanced placement classes, hadn’t provided quite the challenge he’d hoped, nor had it been the change in social status he’d been promised. He had made more friends than in high school, though, with all the time he put into his aerospace engineering program and ROTC, there wasn’t much time for social interaction beyond study time and PT. By some stroke of chance, he wound up meeting, and eventually dating, political science major Nancy, who liked him for some reason that was completely beyond him.

 

They got married too young, which was the first bad sign, and the second was when his dad showed up to the wedding and whole-heartedly approved. However, whatever goodwill his marriage had earned was quickly washed away when he discovered that John would be joining the Air Force immediately upon graduation. He had, apparently, held out some hope that John would still be entering the family business. It was the last wrench in the machine. John refused to participate in an argument, and instead walked out, and never looked back.

 

 

Flying, it turned out, was the only thing that made more sense to him than math.

 

 

He still beat himself up over Riley’s death, still let it eat at him, but also found himself thanking his lucky stars that the Air Force had never uncovered the fact that he’d been involved with another man. If they’d caught any hint of it, his career would’ve been over in a heartbeat. Dishonorable discharge, do not pass go, do not collect $200. The United States Air Force was no place for a queer.

Someone was dead because of him, but John Sheppard was the kind of asshole who was just glad he still got to fly, even it if was just taxiing scientists back and forth across the ass end of the world.

 

 

He really did like Antarctica – it wasn’t just some line he fed to his superiors. He might have liked it better than any place he’d been stationed before. He didn’t have to deal with a lot of people – his CO hated him, but that was nothing new, and the handful of other soldiers-on-punishment mostly kept to themselves – and John got to fly almost every day (even if his talents were being totally wasted). It sure as hell beat cleaning toilets.

 

 

As a child, he’d spent a lot of time building things – first with legos, later with model kits. Cars, trains, airplanes, whatever he could set his hands on. His mother had praised him, asked if he needed help, asked what he wanted to build next. He didn’t really care what came next, so long as it kept his hands busy.

He probably always liked the planes a little more than the rest.

 

 

Some of the scientists were more interesting than others, most of them chatting amongst themselves using cryptic lingo, while the military personnel were always stoic, always dismissive of him – they didn’t have to know his history to know that he was probably there on punishment.

In passing, he occasionally wondered what it was they were all working on down here that had them all so excited. It was, after all, Antarctica.

 

 

The outpost gave him a feeling he couldn’t name, a sensation he’d never before experienced, though it was something like walking through a graveyard. The architecture, in a sense, was beautiful, but he was certain the cold in his bones wasn’t from the temperature alone.

He was hesitant to agree to join the team, at first, because of that uneasy feeling. Though the chair had filled him with positive energy unlike anything he’d ever felt, he wasn’t sure he wanted to go to an Ancient city to be haunted by the ghosts of his long-dead ancestors, with little chance of return.

 

But setting foot in Atlantis was entirely different. Instead of eerie, it was exhilarating, and, in a way, it was the first time he ever really felt alive. The city hummed beneath his feet, and the puddlejumper did figurative back-flips to win his attention.

 

 

Leaving Earth should’ve been a little harder, but his CO was glad to be rid of him, and there were few places left in the world that still wanted him, and even fewer places he wanted to be. In the end, the choice was simple – he might die on this trek, might never make it back to Earth, but at least his time there would be valued.

 

 

His mom had always allowed for his routine, tried to never deviate from the norm. He hadn’t really appreciated that while she was alive. It wasn’t until after she died, when his father was forced to fill her shoes, that things became… difficult. In the beginning, his father had tried his best, but didn’t know how to handle him, didn’t know how to keep a tantrum at bay. Eventually, he gave up, hired babysitters to look after him. They seldom fared any better.

Years later, John would realize just how great his mother had been, how good at it she was. It wasn’t his father’s fault, not really, he just didn’t understand.

Sometimes John didn’t understand either.

 

 

‘Touch this’ and ‘activate that’ and ‘what does this do?’ became a regular occurrence in the week between first sitting in the chair and finally stepping through the stargate. Some of the objects didn’t do anything, but most of them glowed or whirred in some fashion. Activating them was easy, discovering a practical use for them was less so.

“This one makes my teeth feel funny,” Sheppard said, handing the blue stone back to McKay. He shivered a little, trying to shake the feeling it left behind.

“That’s… not useful at all,” McKay said with a frown. He was an odd man, who barked orders at everyone and had no patience for anyone. Half to team rolled their eyes behind his back, while the other half cowered in fear. John though, found that he kind of liked him, was amused by his antics.

 

 

Rodney kicked the door frame, _hard_.

“What are you doing?” Sheppard asked.

“Do you have your sidearm on you?”

Sheppard narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

“I want you to shoot me,” he said. “Not in the head or any vital organs or anything, just in case. I’m too important to the expedition to die, but I need to know how well this personal shield works.” He babbled on while Sheppard readied his sidearm and aimed at his lower leg. McKay stopped mid sentence and cringed in anticipation.

The bullet bounced harmlessly off the invisible barrier.

“ _Cool_ ,” John said, as twin grins grew across their faces.

“Very cool. What should we try next?”

 

 

John Sheppard was not very good at interacting with people, never had been. It was the reason he and his father had clashed for most of his life, the reason he seldom had friends, the reason for most of his trouble in the Air Force. He honestly didn’t expect that this would go any differently.

He found, strangely, that he liked most of the expedition. Most of the scientists babbled incoherently about things that were entirely inconsequential in his opinion, but Atlantis was full of wonder and discovery, and for every one thing that bored him to tears, there were at least three things that fascinated him.

 

 

Rodney had narrowed his eyes when Sheppard sat down across from him in the Antarctic Outpost’s commissary. “Why are you sitting here?” he asked, and it took Sheppard a moment to realize that it wasn’t the expression the ‘cool kids’ wore when the social pariah tried to sit with them. It was genuine confusion.

Sheppard shrugged. “I don’t know anyone else here.” He knew Dr. Weir and Dr. Beckett, neither of whom was present, and the handful of other scientists and soldiers hadn't left any kind of lasting impression.

“Still, wouldn’t you get along better with the other grunts?”

“I’m not a Marine,” Sheppard said. “But I can sit somewhere else, if you prefer.” He started to get up.

“No, that’s not… its fine if you sit here. I’m just surprised. Most people don’t like me very much.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Sheppard said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. He knew why people didn’t like McKay, just like he knew why they didn’t like himself. That didn’t mean he agreed with their assessment.

McKay seemed to accept that, and silently turned his attention back to his food and tablet.

The food, Sheppard thought, was the same as it had been on every other military base he’d been stationed in – tasteless and boring. He kind of liked it.

 

 

Routine was nearly impossible in Atlantis. Missions came at odd hours, and crises arose at the worst possible times, so falling into any kind of pattern was nearly impossible. At times, John found it to be frustrating. One of the things he’d liked about the Air Force was that, even when shit was hitting the fan, there was a predictable order to things.

 

 

The team worked, he thought, because they were all different enough to value one another’s strengths, but not so different that they didn’t understand each other at all.

 

 

It was four am AST when Sheppard wandered into the lab, unsurprised to find Rodney was there working. The week-long mission to Hataris that had thoroughly thrown off his sleep cycle had no doubt done the same to McKay (though, it was hard to tell because he hardly ever slept anyway).

“Can’t sleep?” Rodney asked.

“Nope,” John replied, toeing off his boots as he sat down on the floor in the corner of the room. He powered up his tablet and began reviewing mission reports from the other teams.

 

 

McKay kicked him, _hard_ , in the shin.

“Oww,! What the hell, Rodney?” John was tired, and knew that Rodney was well beyond the point of exhaustion, but could see that he was about to be on the receiving end of an Angry Rant.

“I don’t know who in your life led you to believe that you’re expendable, but let me be the one to make it clear that you _are not_. You can’t just go around riding nukes and hoping someone will be there in time to beam you out.”

“I had no idea the Daedalus would be there,” he said, which, of course, was the exact wrong thing.

“That’s my point! You were completely willing to die, and that is unacceptable.”

“You’re perfectly capable of activating Ancient technology, and there are a handful of decent pilots now-”

Rodney kicked him again.

“While useful, I’m not referring to your skills. I’m talking about _you. You_ are not expendable _. You_ are not replaceable.”

 

 

Looking back, he knew how hard it must have been raising a kid like him, and though his mom had nurtured him in ways his father could not, it had still been hard on her, still had an easier time with Dave. And when John had dismissed The Plan in favor of Stanford and the Air Force, his father easily adapted, replaced him with Dave, who'd been better at all of it anyway. Even in the Air Force, where he'd made a name for himself as one of the best pilots they had, his superiors had made no secret of the fact that there were a dozen people in line to take his place. His whole life he had been very much replaceable.

 

 

In the off hours, the hours between missions and sleep and mealtimes, he sat in the corner of Rodney’s lab, listening to him tinker with Ancient technology, or followed him and Zelenka to a new discovery and listened to them bicker over probable uses. He sat on the floor with his tablet, finishing mission reports, and reviewing paperwork, and sometimes playing computer chess. They seldom asked him to activated Ancient trinkets anymore, rarely even acknowledged that he was there except to settle and argument.

It was the closest thing to routine he could find.

**Author's Note:**

> Like [Aivix](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Aivix/pseuds/Aivix), ([Lives Lived in Parallel](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5971911)) I saw [this](http://gatersgonewild.tumblr.com/post/138027460787/okay-so-i-firmly-believe-that-john-sheppard-is) tumblr post, which reads _Okay, so, I firmly believe that John Sheppard is on the autism spectrum, but like, a fic where both John and Rodney are autistic, and so they’re both kind of idiots when it comes to other people, and so neither of them know the other has been flirting with them for years now, or maybe they’re having trouble flirting in a traditional enough manor that the other one gets it, and just, cute autistic babies being stupidly adorable._ It had never occurred to me before, but it made SO MUCH sense that I couldn't shake it. I can't watch an episode without seeing the signs, and finally this piece hit me (weeks after seeing the post, and reading Aivix's take), so here we are.
> 
> I did struggle through parts of this, and I'm still not sure if the narrative will make sense to the reader like it did to me, so feedback is much appreciated.


End file.
